chess with Charles X.
To this unpopularity, inherited from his mother, was joined another
that was directed against the person of the emigre."

After having been one of the courtiers of the little court at Coblenz,
he had taken service for some time in Russia, and then passed into
England, where he had been one of the most intimate confidants, and one
of the most active agents of the Count d'Artois. Sent secretly into
France, with his elder brother, the Duke Armand de Polignac, he was,
like the latter, compromised in the Cadoudal conspiracy. Their trial is
remarkable for the noble strife of devotion, in which each of the
brothers pleaded the cause of the other at the expense of his own.
Armand was condemned to death. His wife threw herself at the feet of
the First Consul, who, thanks to the intercession of Josephine,
commuted the penalty of death to perpetual confinement. Jules was
condemned to prison, and shared the captivity of his brother. Confined
at first in the castle of Ham, then in the Temple, then at Vincennes,
they obtained, at the time of the marriage of Napoleon with Marie
Louise, their transfer to a hospital. There they knew the General
Mallet, but the part they were suspected of taking in his conspiracy
was never proven. When the allied armies entered France, they succeeded
in escaping, and rejoined the Count d'Artois at Vesoul. They penetrated
to Paris some days before the capitulation, and displayed the white
flag there the 3d of March, 1814.

Peer of France, field-marshal, ambassador, the Prince Jules de Polignac
was one of the favorites of the Restoration. On the proposition of M.
de Chateaubriand, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, he had him named,
in 1823, ambassador to London, where he had shown a genuine talent for
diplomacy. The example of England made him think that in France the
liberties of the constitutional regime could be combined with the
directing influence of an aristocracy. That was his error and the cause
of his fall. Some weeks before his accession to the ministry, he had
solemnly affirmed in the Chamber of Peers, that he considered the
Charter as a solemn pact, on which rested the monarchical institutions
of France, and as the heavenly sign of a serene future. But the
liberals did not believe his word, and accused him of striving to
re-establish the old regime.

Even at court the accession of the Prince de Polignac did not fail to
cause apprehension. Charles X., having announced to